“How can I learn to play bass, Joe?”
“Got one?”
“Yeah.”
“Turn on the radio and start right playing with it”
That’s how I started.

Charles Mingus

Our lives are Swiss—
So still—so Cool—
Till some odd afternoon
The Alps neglect their Curtains
And we look farther on!
Italy stands the other side!
While like a guard between—
The solemn Alps—
The siren Alps
Forever intervene!

Every sort of contradiction can be found in me, depending upon some twist or attribute: timid, insolent, chaste, lecherous, talkative, taciturn, tough, sickly, clever, dull, brooding, affable, lying, truthful, learned, ignorant, generous, miserly and then prodigal. I can see something of all that in myself, depending on how I gyrate; and anyone who studies himself attentively finds in himself and in his very judgment this whirring about and this discordancy. There is nothing I can say about myself as a whole simply and completely, without intermingling and admixture.Michel de Montaigne